The SonicWall Cyber Danger Report 2018 circulated this week shows the number of ransomware attacks has dropped substantially during the past year, tumbling from 638 million attacks in 2016 to 184 million attacks in 2017.

Although the drop of over 71% is definitely good update, there has been a remarkable upsurge in the ransomware variations used and a substantial rise in the use of other malware. There was a 101.2% increase in ransomware variations in use between 2016 and 2017. SonicWall seized 2,855 exceptional ransomware variations in 2017 and reports an 18.4% surge in malware attacks. In 2017, the number of malware attacks increased to 9.32 billion.

Ransomware attacks might be down year-over-year, however, SonicWall expects the number of attacks will increase in 2018, although aiming different appliances. IoT, as well as mobile attacks, are likely to become much more widespread in 2018.

SSL/TLS traffic has risen by 24% in the past year as companies shift from HTTP to HTTPS to offer greater safety for their clients. Cybercriminals have followed and are progressively using SSL/TLS encryption to conceal attacks.

Significant reductions have been observed in the usage of exploit kits during 2017. Exploit kits are utilized to leverage weaknesses to transfer malware. The most usually abused weaknesses in 2016 were in Adobe Flash, however, with backing now dropped by browsers, these kinds of attacks have become far less active. SonicWall notices that there were no serious Flash weaknesses found in 2017. Nevertheless, new apps are now being aimed with remarkable increases in attacks on Microsoft Office and Apple TV, while Microsoft Edge attacks rose by 13% in 2017.

There have been numerous prominent arrests in 2017 with main players in the malware supply chain detained which has assisted to interrupt the supply of latest malware variations. These detentions have compelled cybercriminals to exercise greater care, change the cryptocurrencies used, and shift to dynamic cryptocurrency wallets.

Although there is some good news in the statement, cyber attacks are still now the leading business danger and without improved cybersecurity solutions, companies are likely to carry on to experience high numbers of expensive attacks every year.